Mediawatch-UK

Mediawatch-UK

Friday, 13 March 2015

Since 2012 internet service providers have
been acting under a court order to block access to many of the biggest sharing
sites that link to illegal content, including the best-known Pirate Bay.Although initially reluctant to block such sites,
following the court’s ruling ISPs agreed to comply.

However users can visit so-called proxy
sites that bypass the restrictions.This
week it was reported that, as part of the battle against online piracy, UK ISPs
have now begun blocking access to websites that provide a list of Pirate Bay
alternatives

This block has only come about because of
an expensive court case brought by rights holders including the British
Phonographic Industry and the Premier League amongst others.Big businesses can afford to enforce their
rights through the courts but parents and children do not have this option.

Which powerful corporations are fighting to
protect the interests of the victims of the ‘free and open’ internet that
enables children to have pornography streamed into their bedrooms?

These are the interests which need real
protection.Children’s rights are just
as important as those of big business.

Following Government pressure the ‘big
four’ ISPs all offer easy to use filters and Sky and TalkTalk have taken the
brave move to block potentially harmful content as a default unless users opt
in to access it.However many smaller
ISPs do not offer filters – including one which makes a virtue of its refusal
to offer protective filters.

It is time for the government to legislate
to afford children and families the same protections as big businesses.With the election almost upon us this might
be something you would like to raise with prospective candidates canvassing your
vote.

Friday, 13 February 2015

Valentine’s Day, more usually associated
with flowers, chocolate and romance is, this year, being hijacked as a
promotional vehicle for the release of the film Fifty Shades of Grey which opens in cinemas across the UK on
13th February.

The book on which this film was based
glamorised and legitimised both sexual and domestic violence.With the mainstream release and promotion of this
film opinion makers, the media and celebrities are legitimising this violence
too.

Sexual violence and sexual exploitation are
at an all time high, permeating our culture by way of hardcore pornography.This film further legitimises them despite
the fact that making violence ‘sexy’ has significant consequences to individuals,
relationships and society.

The extended trailer for the film calls it
a ‘fairy tale’; a misleading description which suggests a simple love story and
masks the film’s true themes of humiliation, manipulation, abuse and
degradation of women.

The ‘fairy tale’ in this film is that, in
reality, women in relationships such as the one depicted in the film don’t end
up like Anastasia — they often end up in a woman’s shelter, on the run for
years, or dead.

This film also perpetuates the ‘fairy tale’
that women can ‘fix’ violent, controlling men by being obedient and loving.

The Lie: Fifty Shades of Grey is a love story

The Truth: Fifty Shades of Grey is about abuse,
violence and the

grooming of a young girl for sadistic sex

Violence is violence and inflicting sexual
violence is not sexy.While this should
be a black-and-white truth, this film is selling it in all shades of grey.

Such is the hype surrounding this film it
is naïve to assume it will escape the notice of children.We have already seen:

A beginner’s guide to bondage broadcast at 10.30am on ITV’s This Morning.

The Barbican Cinema holding a Parent and Baby screening of the
film

The trailer for the film has been classified as 15 by the BBFC
which means it can be shown to children at screenings of 15 rated films

The BBFC has given the film an 18
certificate because it “contains strong sex and nudity, along with the
portrayal of erotic role play based on domination, submission and
sado-masochistic practices”.

We’d like to amend
this to read: “Promotes torture as
sexually gratifying, encourages stalking and abuse of power, promotes female
inequality, glamorises and legitimises violence against women.”

Valentine’s Day, more usually associated
with flowers, chocolate and romance is, this year, being hijacked as a
promotional vehicle for the release of the film Fifty Shades of Grey which opens in cinemas across the UK on
13th February.

The book on which this film was based
glamorised and legitimised both sexual and domestic violence.With the mainstream release and promotion of this
film opinion makers, the media and celebrities are legitimising this violence
too.

Sexual violence and sexual exploitation are
at an all time high, permeating our culture by way of hardcore pornography.This film further legitimises them despite
the fact that making violence ‘sexy’ has significant consequences to individuals,
relationships and society.

The extended trailer for the film calls it
a ‘fairy tale’; a misleading description which suggests a simple love story and
masks the film’s true themes of humiliation, manipulation, abuse and
degradation of women.

The ‘fairy tale’ in this film is that, in
reality, women in relationships such as the one depicted in the film don’t end
up like Anastasia — they often end up in a woman’s shelter, on the run for
years, or dead.

This film also perpetuates the ‘fairy tale’
that women can ‘fix’ violent, controlling men by being obedient and loving.

The Lie: Fifty Shades of Grey is a love story

The Truth: Fifty Shades of Grey is about abuse,
violence and the

grooming of a young girl for sadistic sex

Violence is violence and inflicting sexual
violence is not sexy.While this should
be a black-and-white truth, this film is selling it in all shades of grey.

Such is the hype surrounding this film it
is naïve to assume it will escape the notice of children.We have already seen:

A beginner’s guide to bondage broadcast at 10.30am on ITV’s This Morning.

The Barbican Cinema holding a Parent and Baby screening of the
film

The trailer for the film has been classified as 15 by the BBFC
which means it can be shown to children at screenings of 15 rated films

The BBFC has given the film an 18
certificate because it “contains strong sex and nudity, along with the
portrayal of erotic role play based on domination, submission and
sado-masochistic practices”.

We’d like to amend
this to read: “Promotes torture as
sexually gratifying, encourages stalking and abuse of power, promotes female
inequality, glamorises and legitimises violence against women.”

Thursday, 5 February 2015

Last week the Director General of the BBC,
Tony Hall, featured in a wide-ranging interview in the Radio Times. The
discussion ranged from the representation of women in BBC output to whether The
Archers has become too soapy.

One of the areas touched on was the
watershed. “What’s the point when kids can access unsuitable content on a
variety of devices at any time?” asked the interviewer. Lord Hall
replied: “the watershed is still a useful way of judging the content and
sensitivities, and taste and decency issues. But has the watershed got a
future in 20 or 30 years’ time? I suspect not.”

Whilst it’s true that new technologies mean
the watershed in 20 years’ time will look very different to what we understand
it to be today, it is a concern to hear that the man in charge of the BBC
thinks it has no future.

The watershed is now 50 years old and
television viewers still support its existence. Ofcom’s research shows
high levels of regard with approximately 80% of parents saying they believe it
is relevant and necessary. Ofcom’s Director, Tony Close, has described it
as “a vital means of protecting viewers.” Whilst it can never be the
complete answer to protecting children from potentially harmful material is a
useful tool and, as such, is worth protecting.

Presently the vast majority of television
is watched as it is broadcast although the number of ‘time-shifted’ hours
consumed continues to rise steadily. Before such viewing becomes the
principle means of television consumption we need to consider how we extend the
protection currently offered by the watershed into the online space.

This is not an impossible request;
presently subscribers to cable and satellite services have to enter a PIN
number to access post-watershed content which they have downloaded. This
is a workable solution which we would like to see extended to other on-demand
platforms such as iPlayer.

There are feasible steps that can and
should be taken by broadcasters to control access to post-watershed material by
children. Now is the time to consider how we can replicate the valuable
tool which is the watershed online.

Last
week Sky Broadband became the first major ISP to announce that it would block
adult content as a default unless users opt in to access it. Designed to
filter out content deemed to be unsuitable for children aged under 13, Sky's
Broadband Shield has been offered as default to new customers for a year but
this will now be rolled out to all 5.3 million existing customers.

Most
of the UK’s
ISPs all offer filtering software for parents concerned about the potentially
harmful material their children may be able to access online, but few have
offered this as a default.

Sky's
brand director, explained the change: "What we're doing now is simply
making sure that the automatic position of Sky Broadband Shield is the safest
one for all - that's 'on', unless customers choose otherwise.”

Starting
this week, the company will email its customers about the blocker. If
households ignore the email, and a subsequent reminder, pornography and other
websites considered to be harmful to children will be blocked automatically.
Sky’s brand director said: “It’s better for people to make their own
choice, but until they do, we believe this process will be the safest one.”

It
is to be hoped that Sky’s brave move will put pressure on other major internet
providers such as BT – which has twice as many broadband customers as Sky – and
Virgin Media to adopt the same ‘family-friendly’ approach.

Anti-censorship
groups have been quick to voice their opposition to the move and their
assertions that filters do not block all unsavoury material are correct.
Filters can never be a substitute for monitoring children’s internet use and
talking about other dangers beyond content, however they are a vital tool for
parents and an important first line of defence. As such Sky’s decision is
to be applauded and, we hope, emulated across the industry.

Wednesday, 21 January 2015

Last week the Telegraph ran an article
on pornography by Martin Daubney putting the case for what he described as
‘state-approved porn in the UK’.
‘If we can’t axe it, should we tax it – like soft drugs in Holland
or prostitution in Germany’
- he suggested

Mr Daubney is the former editor of lad’s
mag Loaded and he has previously spoken of his concern that the magazine he
edited might have acted as a gateway to pornography for a generation of young
men. He also presented the Channel 4 documentary Porn on the Brain which looked at the effect of pornography
consumption the adolescent brain and in which he described online porn as ‘the
most pernicious threat facing children today’.

According to Mr Daubney his massively
controversial proposition could even achieve the unthinkable: and unite
censors, MPs, child protection agencies and, perhaps most astonishingly of all,
the pornographers themselves.

He proposes that all sites carrying
pornographic material be confined to a dedicated domain -.xxx for example –
with compulsory age verification.These
sites would host material within agreed, legal parameters of taste and be
licensed by the government and any sites not in compliance would be blacklisted
and blocked by ISPs.

On the face of it this is a great idea; if
the internet is the Wild West than a corral for such material has to be better
than nothing.However whether it would
seriously impact material hosted on foreign sites, which are currently where
the most extreme, violent and degrading material is hosted, is a moot point.

Just because there is a demand for
pornography which does not appear to be abating does not mean that its use is
without consequence.

This proposal provides porn with a veneer
of respectability which it does not merit.It fails to acknowledge the very real potential harm of pornography.We cannot trust the industry itself to
acknowledge this when its current advice site offers nothing more than
information on child protection filters.

Our proposals for opt-in regulation met
with criticism this yet this model would be far more problematic; with material
being blocked by ISPs it really would be state-sponsored censorship.Could all overseas porn be blocked with
violating trade agreements?It’s also doubtful
whether it could work in the long term as vested interests push for more
latitude. We’ve seen time and again that
rules on what and what is not acceptable are open to interpretation leading to
a constant pushing boundaries – why should porn be different?

Clearly verifying the age of children
attempting to access pornography is crucial.Sites hosted in the UK
already verify age but ATVOD has offered a creative solution to target overseas
sites - by impacting their revenues.The
UK is a substantial market
and to access customers in the UK
would be quite a powerful incentive to introduce restrictions.

ATVOD wants all adult sites to request a licence,
which would only be granted if age checks were in place, with banks and other
payment processors not allowed to handle fees for services from UK
citizens to unregulated sites.Payment
firms say they will act if shown that sites are breaking the law and the regulator
accepts that this means new legislation.

ATVOD say this matter is so urgent it is
‘critical the legislation is enacted during this Parliament’.With an election coming up this is something
you might like to raise with anyone canvassing your vote.

Monday, 15 December 2014

Apparently one of the most popular gifts
for children this Christmas will be a tablet computer. Although the first
such device was launched less than five years ago in 2010 the technology has
proved so popular that, according to Ofcom, 70% of 5-15 year olds now have
access to one. Smartphones will be another most-requested this year and
it is sobering to think that back in 2011 when Reg Bailey reported for the
Government on the sexualisation of childhood the technology was so new that his
report included just one reference to smartphones; four year on most mobile
phone users have such a device.

Similarly the way that we use the internet
has changed. Initially the internet hosted sites limited to the passive
viewing of content but we are now able to interact and collaborate with each
other in a virtual community through social networking sites, blogs, wikis,
video sharing sites etc.

These changes have given us new
capabilities and ways to connect but they have also presented us with a whole
new set of challenges. A decade ago behaviours such as sexting and
trolling barely existed but today we have to consider how best to protect
people from such harmful practices.

The pace of innovation is incredibly fast
and it is vital that regulation and legislation continues to keep up.
This month we have seen a number of developments aimed at closing this gap:

Sexual communication with a child online is to become a
criminal offence. Inviting a child to communicate sexually –
regardless of whether or not the recipient of those messages replies or
responds in any sexual way – will be illegal. The law will apply to anyone
over the age of 18 trying to send a sexual message to anyone under the age
of 16 – whether that’s on Facebook, SMS, WhatsApp, email or any other
communications channel.

GCHQ and the National Crime Agency are to work together to hunt
online paedophiles with the same effort used to track terrorists.
Data taken from tens of millions of child abuse photos and videos
seized during previous operations will be compiled to form a new database
to aid investigations into suspected paedophiles across the UK.

Google has announced it is developing child-friendly versions
of its search site, Chrome browser and video-sharing service
YouTube. The modified versions will be designed for children aged up
to 12 and will include tools that let parents monitor and manage how much
time their offspring spend online and where they go.

Twitter, like many other sites, has become a repository for
abusive language. A new system for reporting abuse on the platform
has now been developed offering additional user controls, further
improvements to reporting and new enforcement procedures for abusive
accounts.

These are all examples of government and
industry working to keep pace with technological innovation and they are to be
commended. However it is important that our efforts are not solely
confined to catching up.

An independent review into the future of
government in the digital age has recently been published. The review was
commissioned by the Labour Party and it recommended that the UK Government
establish an expert technology ethics body similar to those already in place in
medicine and academia. It would help address complex challenges such as
ownership and control of data and the right to be forgotten. As one
commentator put it: “we need a technology philosopher in chief for our age,
before the technology runs away with itself.”